to dash against darkness
by weightofmywords
Summary: "Castle," she demands, his name scratching against her throat on its way out. If the boys are here, he must be here, would never not be here, not unless… (7x15 AU)


**A Reckoning AU, from the castlefanficprompts blog (prompt below fic).**

**You can blame Moana for this**

* * *

Feral, wild, feline. She straightens, stares detachedly at the body on the ground below her, observes the expanding pool of blood without any real emotion. The vermilion lake glistens sickly, all scarlet highlights and carmine shadows in the uneven light of the cellar. The still surface is shattered as drops fall from the rivulets that run down her fingers, from the scalpel still in her hand, concentric ripples casting wavelets through the red.

She takes an automatic step back when the blood spreads enough that it threatens to stain the bare skin of her feet, but her eyes never leave the body. Surely it's just a trick, the surgeon will rise any second; Tyson had fooled her before, played dead too well. She won't fall for it again, won't turn her back on the doctor until she's utterly sure.

There's a crash behind her, frantic cries of her name. It's the wrong voice, though familiar all the same. It's the wrong voice, and she doesn't turn.

Somehow, her tongue twists around his name, chokes hoarsely from her in a voice rough from disuse. "Castle."

She can't look away until her husband is here, won't believe she's safe until he's by her side.

"Kate," that's Ryan, hesitance strung tautly through the single syllable with an edge of tension that causes her fingers to clench tighter around the sharp tool in her hand; accidentally nicking the flesh closest to the blade, a fresh trickle of her own blood mingles with Nieman's.

"_Castle_," she demands, his name scratching against her throat on its way out. If the boys are here, he must be here, would never _not _be here, not unless…

Panic grips her, and she flies around, her eyes as wild as the pound of her heart as she scans the gathering of people by the door for her partner. He's not there, her stricken stare met by only Kevin, Javi and a tactical team.

Esposito takes a step toward her, arm outstretched, but she flinches back, the sole of her heel landing with a splash in the pool of Nieman's blood. The hot stickiness soaks into the leg of her trousers and the material clings to her ankle, closes around her tibia like a fist.

_Where is Castle?_

She can't form his name, an animalistic whine all that she can muster. She's never felt this far from human, this disconnected from her body and after it all, after all she's been through in the last couple of days, she just needs her husband; but he isn't here, even though the boys are and far as she's concerned it can only mean one thing.

A broken keen escapes her, inhuman, strangled as the scalpel in hand drops to the ground and lands in the puddle of blood with a wet clatter.

"Kate. _Beckett." _Ryan's hands land on her cheeks before she even realises his increased proximity, guiding her head so that she has no choice but to look at him. "He's alive. Alive."

She claws at his wrists, can't bear the contact, can't take the confinement of his firm hold after her captivity and he releases her. "Where?"

He swallows hard, throat bobbing as his lips turn down. "Let's get you out of here, Beckett."

Turning to Esposito with desperate eyes, Kate silently implores him to fill her in. Instead, he looks away, gaze flicking to Ryan and then the floor as he moves to flank her. "Come on." He says, inclines his head towards the door and ushers her forward without making the mistake of touching her. A trail of bloody footprints are left in her wake, growing fainter with every step that she takes.

Fresh air burns her lungs as soon as she exits her prison, the mustiness she'd become accustomed to over the last two days replaced by the frozen chill of February. It's cleansing and with every breath she returns to herself a little more, takes comfort in the cold dagger that each inhale of the winter wind carves sharply into her chest. "Where is Castle?" Her voice is raw but steady all the same.

"At the hospital," Espo supplies, ignoring the frantic _stop this _that traces Ryan's lips. "Tyson - he's dead - shot him before my bullet took him down. He's in surgery."

The world that's been unnaturally still since her hand closed around Nieman's wrist grows dizzy, spinning into a frenzy until she can't see, can't breathe, can't anything. She did not live through this only to lose him, their future, their family, the potential additions to it that they'd agreed to discuss _later_, right before this whole mess started.

She can't lose him.

It's a blind stumble to the waiting ambulance. Paramedics await her but she refuses them, fighting them off until Ryan promises her that the sooner she lets them take a look at her, the sooner she can be with her husband. So then she endures them, lets them clean the abrasions on her hand, bandage where the scalpel had dug into her palm, deeper than she had realised. Ryan brings her clothes, an NYPD hoodie and sweats and a pair of sneakers two sizes too large. He tosses her three pairs of socks with an apologetic shrug and a tight smile.

In the back seat of Ryan's cruiser, she feels trapped, as helpless as many of the criminals who sat here before her. The feeling of weakness is too much, and after this whole ordeal she just needs to feel in control again.

"The siren. Put the siren on."

"Beckett," Ryan starts, clearly about to object to the misuse but Javi leans over and flips the switch.

"Just give her this, bro. She might not have much else left." Esposito's voice is low and she can barely make it out. She definitely wasn't meant to.

Her nails are too tattered to bite crescents into her palm but she squeezes her hands into tight fists anyway, sits ramrod straight and stares blankly ahead. She doesn't close her eyes, not until the urge to blink is too much and she's left with no choice. Everytime she closes her eyes she sees Nieman, fear and shock frozen on her face as blood bubbles from the slit in her throat.

New York Presbyterian looms hugely ahead of them and she's out of the car before it even comes to a complete stop. Espo's right behind her, Ryan picking up speed again to go find somewhere to park.

"I need to find Richard Castle." She tells a nurse at the front desk. "Now."

"What is your relationship with the patient?"

"I'm his wife." Beckett manages, the title cracking as it slips from her tongue. The woman's eyes drop to her left hand and she realises for the first time that her rings are missing, gone from her fourth finger. "I am his _wife." _She hisses, and the nurse must sense her desperation,

"I'll go and see if I can find someone who knows anything," she tells her. "If you'd like to take a seat…" Gesturing to the chairs in the waiting room, the nurse departs in search of information.

The emptiness of her ring finger haunts her as she takes a seat and she rubs absently at the knuckle until the skin is raw and red; Espo watches her closely and taps out a message on his phone. Lanie arrives not long after and with her she has both bands of metal, shining brighter than ever. Clean, too clean. If she wasn't so relieved to have them back, Beckett would likely be more preoccupied with whatever had warranted the intense cleanse.

"Family of Richard Castle?" She hears, jerks to attention as a doctor enters the waiting room fray. It's just her, she registers. Where are Martha and Alexis?

"He sent them to Europe after you were... taken," Lanie says. Kate wonders if she'd spoken her thoughts aloud or if her friend had merely guessed the question on her mind.

"Here," she says, standing up to get the physician's attention. "He's my husband."

"I'm Dr. Altman," the surgeon introduces herself, extending a hand in a gesture that Beckett takes too long to mirror, the woman dropping her hand awkwardly. She wonders if this distrust of doctors is something she'll get over; all she can picture as she looks at the blonde's face is the cold, calculating stare of Kelly Nieman. "Your husband is out of surgery. It went as well as we could have hoped. We had to open his chest to repair the damage to his lung, but the bullet missed his heart. There'll be scarring but-"

"Can I see him?" Kate interrupts. Yes, she wants the information, needs the information, but she needs him more.

"You can, but he'll be asleep. He's on a ventilator until he can breathe on his own, and if he wakes up he'll fight the tube so he'll be kept under for a couple of days until his condition is a little less serious. There's a lot of tubes and wires and machine around him, so it will look pretty scary, but he _is _stable. Critical still, but stable."

Scary she can do. The last couple of days have proved that if she didn't know it already.

Despite that, the sight of him, pale and impossibly small in the hospital bed is more traumatising than her abduction, than the sight of her captor's body bleeding and lifeless at her feet. Castle looks as much like a corpse as Nieman had.

She takes a seat by his bedside and she starts her vigil.

* * *

When he wakes three days later, she's there, Alexis too, though Martha's back at the loft picking up more clothes for the three of them and packing a bag for when Castle comes out from the induced coma. His eyes are wide and panicked as he tries to speak, finds himself unable to around the tube in his throat. All Kate can do is hold his hand, murmur soothing words as his frantic grip crushes her fingers.

The doctor tells him not to fight the intubation, let it breathe for him, and it takes a while, but he settles eventually despite his discomfort.

When they finally remove the tube hours later, the first thing he asks is whether she's okay. He doesn't know what happened in that cellar, how close she came to death and how it is that she narrowly avoided it and she's glad for that. The concern in his eyes is too consuming as it is.

Behind her lids, she still sees Nieman, alternately leaning in with a scalpel and reeling backwards with it in her throat. But then she opens her eyes and she sees him.

"Yeah, Castle. I'm okay."

* * *

**Prompt: _'7x15, Tyson manages to shoot Castle before collapsing, doesn't have to be death'_**

**tumblr: castleholic**

**twitter: _sfv**


End file.
